Automation

Management

Storage APIs

Storage Awareness

VMware vSphere® API for Storage Awareness (VASA) is the primary control plane API for vSphere. This API allows vSphere to both investigate storage configurations and to set storage properties for arrays that support this functionality. VASA is used by vSphere Virtual Volumes, Virtual SAN and vSphere APIs for IO Filtering (VAIO) as the single unified control plane for vSphere storage. Storage vendors can use the VMware vSphere® API for Storage Awareness (VASA) to provide vSphere with information about specific disk arrays for tighter integration between storage and the virtual infrastructure. The shared information includes details on storage virtualization, including health status, configuration, capacity and thin provisioning. This level of detail can now be passed up through VMware® vCenter Server™ to the user.

Make it easy for administrators to select the most appropriate storage resources when a virtual machine is created based on high-level details around capacity, performance and capabilities of the underlying disk.

These APIs are included with the VMware vSphere® Enterprise Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus Edition™.

IO Filtering (Tech Preview)

VMware vSphere API for IO Filtering (VAIO) allows third party software developers to add data services to ESXi and vSphere. VAIO is designed to allow fully synchronous access to the IO queue of a Virtual Machine with no changes to the running machine. This means that third party filters can do things like caching and replication dynamically against any VM running on any ESXi host at any time. VAIO is fully integrated with
vSphere Storage Policy-Based Management (SBPM) which ensures a simple user experience for the vSphere administrator. The VAIO SDK is available to VMware partners who join the VAIO developer program.

Multipathing

Modular storage architecture allows storage partners to write a plug in for their specific capabilities.

Plug ins communicate with the intelligence running in the storage array to determine the best path selection, as well as leverage parallel paths to increase I/O performance and reliability from the vSphere host to the storage array.